Roundabout Quiz 4

There are very few roundabouts on Singapore’s major roads nowadays. Most of them have been converted to traffic-lights controlled junctions; some with flyovers and underpasses. Besides the famous Newton Circus, I can only think of 3 offhand. There are 2 below the Tuas and Pioneer flyovers and one at West Coast Road called Buroh Circus. The rest are mostly small roundabouts in residential areas such as the ones at Hillview and Seranggoon Gardens which I have blogged about previously here.

Over the past few months, whilst driving around Singapore, I came across four more. Let’s see if any of you can identify all of them.

No. 1 should be easy. It is a very old roundabout and located at a very busy place where most Singaporeans would have visited one time or another.

No. 2 and No. 3 are small roundabouts located in residential areas.

No. 4 is interesting. It is very new. Previously this place was a cross road junction. Apparently there had been some near-accidents and so it was converted into a roundabout just a few months ago.

Roundabout Quiz 3

Did you read this article in yesterday's Sunday Times? There was a short paragraph about me and the roundabout quizzes which I put up last year. If you are new to this blog, you may want to give them a try.

1) Roundabout Quiz No. 1

2) Answers to Roundabout Quiz No. 1

3) Roundabout Quiz No. 2

OK. Now we come to Quiz No. 3. I managed to find 10 roundabouts that are no longer in existence in Singapore. Where were they located?

1) Bukit Panjang Circus
2) Princess Circus
3) Alexandra Circus
4) Delta Circus
5) Shenton Circus
6) Anson Circus
7) Gillman Circus
8) Sembawang Hills Circus
9) Orchard Circus
10) Pulo Saigon Circus

Roundabout Quiz 2

Question 1.

What was the name of the roundabout located at the junction of Tanglin Road, Napier Road and Grange Road? It had a beautiful fountain in the centre and pineapple shrubs planted around it. See photos below from the collection of the National Archives of Singapore.

Question 2.

What was the name of hotel next to it? Below are some hints courtesy of Peter Chan.

1. This hotel was built by Khoo Teck Puat and named after a country.

2. Then it was sold to a HK consortium and acquired a new name.

3. It had a basement disco and the interiors were plastered with red bricks. The first name of the disco was called THE PUB but later became known as THE LONDON SCENE.

4. The first band to perform every night was Heather and the Thunderbirds. My band, THE REFLECTIONS played there in 1972. We played as the second band.

Roundabout Quiz 1

Younger Singaporeans may not know that not so long ago, we had many roundabouts in Singapore. Over the past 20 years or so, most of them have been replaced by signalized traffic light junctions, flyovers and underpasses.

Of the remaining roundabouts, the most famous one I guess would be Newton Circus (Photo 1 below) and the recently converted Guillemard Circus. Along Jalan Ahmad Ibrahim are a couple more; one at Pioneer Road/Sector and another at Tuas. Plus a couple of smaller ones in Serangoon Gardens (Photo 2 below), and Hillview (Photo 3 below).

In my recent article about Upper Bukit Timah Road from Beauty World to Bukit Panjang, I forgot to mention that until recently, there was a roundabout where Anak Bukit joined Upp Bt Timah Rd. So I thought I might as well leave that till later and turn it into a quiz with some additional questions. So here it is.

What was the name of the roundabout at the junction of these roads?

I will start with some easy questions.


1) Queensway and Commonwealth Avenue (this was reputedly the largest roundabout in Singapore)

2) Queensway, Farrer Road and Holland Road. There used to be a beautiful fountain here. Now replaced with flyover and underpass. I will blog about it later.

3) Alexandra Road, Queensway and Jalan Bukit Merah

4) Lorong 1, 2 and 6 Toa Payoh

5) Bukit Timah, Clementi and Anak Bukit (Answer found in an earlier post)

Now for some harder ones:

6) Macpherson Road and Serangoon Road

7) Anak Bukit and Upper Bukit Timah Rd

But leave the toughest to the last.

8) Lornie Road and Thomson Road, just in front of the entrance to MacRitchie Reservoir.


PS – My older readers may want to contribute some questions so that I can compile them for future quizzes. Please email them to me at: cslam(at)hoshin(dot)com(dot)sg. (Someone told me you shouldn’t type your actual email address as those pesky, ‘wuliao’ spammers have software to harvest your email address and then …… you know the rest)